


Doin' It For Themselves

by Severina



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: tv-universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-12 23:10:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3358754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At first all Beth can see is the big picture window leading to the outside, and she pushes at Maggie's back, nearly crawling into his sister's skin as the stumbling footsteps behind them get closer. But then she sees what Maggie has seen – the mass of geeks slapping at the glass of the door, more of them gathering in the garbage strewn courtyard and drawn to the sound of skeletal fists scraping at the windows, skeletal fingers scratching at the glass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doin' It For Themselves

**Author's Note:**

> Post Season Two. Fic 01 of 03 for the 3TP relationship challenge at LJ's tv_universe, for the prompt "family".
> 
> * * *

"Beth! This way!"

Beth stumbles, nearly falls until Maggie darts forward and grabs her by the forearm. The snarls and moans of the walkers echo around the metallic containers, and she lets her sister tug her forward a few steps before planting her feet. "Daddy! He was back that way but I—"

"Come on, Beth!"

"No, I lost him! He had my hand and then—"

"He'll make his way to the rendezvous point, now come on!" 

Maggie punctuates the statement with another tug of her arm, and Beth sets her lips in a thin line, glances back over her shoulder. There is no sign of her father, but as she watches two walkers stagger around the corner. She turns and reluctantly breaks into a jog behind her sister. 

The storage centre is nothing but a maze of corridors, the rusted metal of the lockers and crumbling plaster of the walls. She darts left and then right, following the sound of Maggie's running steps in the dark, her sister nothing but a skittering shadow on the wall in the gloom of the interior hallways. She always hated the damn storage lockers – all the dust and dark, jumbled furniture everywhere, never getting outside to feel the sun on her face. She screams when something reaches for her from the darkness of one of the big lockers, puts on an extra burst of speed when the walkers come tumbling out, falling over themselves in their haste to reach her. To devour her.

She almost careens into Maggie's back when her sister skids to a stop. At first all Beth can see is the big picture window leading to the outside, and she pushes at Maggie's back, nearly crawling into his sister's skin as the stumbling footsteps behind them get closer. But then she sees what Maggie has seen – the mass of geeks slapping at the glass of the door, more of them gathering in the garbage strewn courtyard and drawn to the sound of skeletal fists scraping at the windows, skeletal fingers scratching at the glass.

Beth swipes at her hair, dashes back and scans the area for a weapon. Nothing. Nothing but the overturned desk in the open office area, the chair toppled on its side, the papers of names and storage locker numbers covering the floor. Nothing but –

"Here!" she yells.

She doesn't check to see if Maggie is following, merely runs back into the room and sets the chair on its wheels. Clambers up onto to it and reaches; slides her fingers into the grate, winces as the corrugated metal cuts into her cuticles, rips a nail clean away. She says a silent thankful prayer to God that the storage facility is as run down as it is when the grate covering the ventilation shaft comes off in her hands in a spray of dust and rusty screws. 

Behind her she hears the scuffle of Maggie's feet, the snarl of one of the walkers cut short with a thunk that she identifies immediately as the splintering of skull. She looks back over her shoulder to see Maggie silhouetted against the window, a dead geek at her feet and her fireplace poker clutched in a firm grip, ready to take on the next.

"Maggie," she hisses. "Now!"

Maggie's face is pale when she turns; Beth sees her grit her teeth just before she turns her back on Maggie again and plants her palms on the edge of the shaft to haul herself inside. On some level she's aware that the jagged edges have cut her palms, that there is now bright red blood dripping down from the hole in the wall to plop onto the floor below. The snarls of the walkers are muffled now, and she tries to turn to help Maggie get inside but it's smaller than she expected; she's able to hunch up onto her knees but can't turn around. She wiggles further into the shaft and then looks over her shoulder as best she can; hears Maggie mutter "Oh shit" before her sister's fingers appear at the ragged opening and the little light filtering into the space is blocked by the bulk of Maggie's body. There is a clang that she recognizes as the fireplace poker landing somewhere on the floor of the room.

"You're doin' fine, Maggie," she encourages, sliding forward. "Just keep movin'."

Beth shuffles forward a few more feet, her hands searching blindly in the dark. She only manages another foot before her palm slaps down on twisted metal, crumbling mesh and damp plaster; draws her hand away quickly at the sound of squealing mice protesting her interference in their nest. She shudders, and only then realizes that the shaft has opened up above her. She quickly shifts onto her front, reaches forward to grab for Maggie's questing hand and finally closes it around her wrist and pulls her the rest of the way. 

There isn't much light, but she can see that Maggie's face is paler than ever. Her sister would rather face a horde of walkers than one tiny crawlspace.

"You did great," Beth reassures her. "You okay?"

"No," Maggie answers quickly, and her attempt at a laugh is weak and feeble. "Your escape plan had to be squeezing us into something the size of a sewer pipe?"

Beth leans back against the barricade, closes her eyes. In the silence she can hear the sound of water dripping somewhere back along the line, the rasp of her sister's breath as she struggles to get her breathing under control. And in the room they left behind, the increasingly loud snarls of the walkers. In her mind's eye she pictures more and more of them lurching into the room, filling every available space, snapping and stumbling and never giving up.

She jerks when Maggie's hand comes up to smooth through her hair, opens her eyes to see her sister's face filling her vision. 

"Hey, Bethie. I'm just kiddin', you know? You did great finding us a way out of there," Maggie says soothingly. Her hand smoothes down her hair again, finds a lock to tuck behind her ear. "Ain't your fault I got stuck down that old water main when I was eight." 

"It's not that," Beth says. Maggie's fear of enclosed spaces had been drilled into her since she was a little girl, even though Beth herself was just a baby when it happened. "Just ain't much of an escape plan." She indicates the blockage with a jut of her elbow, and watches Maggie's face blanch even further as her sister feels along the jumble of plaster and metal with her hand.

"Maybe we can dig our way out," Maggie suggests after a moment.

Beth cocks her head, thinking. "Maybe," she finally answers. "Crawl back and drop the debris out the hole into the room? You stay here, I'll do the crawlin'," she finishes more decisively when it looks like Maggie is steeling herself to offer. She offers up a mischievous smile. "I never spent three hours stuck beneath Mr. Henshaw's house cryin' like a baby when I was eight, after all," she teases. 

Maggie pushes at her shoulder but offers a smile of her own before reaching out and tugging at the first slab of plaster. It breaks off in her hands, carrying with it the damp smell of mildew and rot, and Beth holds out her arms to cradle it against her chest before she turns around and begins crawling on her stomach back toward the opening of the shaft. She tries not to think about how it'll take hours to clear their way; about how the others are probably already gathering at the meeting point at the old well in Ferguson. Tries not to think about her father, one moment holding onto her hand and the next lost in the gloom of the dirty corridors. And of course once she tells herself not to think of her dad he is all she can think of. She lifts her chin and blinks away the tears that want to fall, presses on toward the square of light. 

She is less than a foot away from the opening of the shaft when the walker's face fills the opening.

Beth screams, instinctively shoves out with the bundle of moldering plaster in her arms. The stuff crumbles as it hits the walker's face, does nothing to slow the snapping of its jaws. She hears Maggie shout behind her, feels the old metal piping shudder as Maggie starts toward her, and only then finds her voice.

"Stay back!" she shouts. 

The walker's snarls echo in the confining space, and Beth cannot take her eyes off the thing's hands as it grips the edge of the opening. The jagged edges cut through undead flesh like a hot knife through butter, and her stomach does a sick lurching flip-flop as she watches two of its fingers slice completely off and tumble backward to the floor. 

Then she is moving, using her elbows to scramble backward on her stomach until she reaches the spot where the ceiling lifts and she can stumble onto her knees, press her back into the rotted barricade. What little light was filtering into the shaft is almost gone, but she reaches out blindly to take Maggie's hand, grips her sister's fingers tight as the walker scrabbles for purchase. 

"We kick out with our feet," Maggie says. "Their skulls are like rotten fruit. We can smash them in, Beth."

Beth nods, wishes she felt as confident as Maggie sounds. She takes a shallow breath, starts to edge forward toward the walker's snarling face. As she creeps up she can see that it hasn't managed to gain any ground, its useless fingers still slapping at the edge of the hole to gain purchase, its dead body not understanding how to grip and pull itself up. She slips down onto her back and slides toward the opening, closes her eyes briefly to gather her courage before kicking out with her booted feet.

The first kick smashes in the thing's nose, sends bone fragments and blackish blood spewing in a thick arc. Beth blinks and readjusts her aim and the second kick takes the walker high on the forehead, the heel of her boot sinking into the soft flesh before the walker falls back from the opening.

She holds her breath when she hears the wheels on the chair rattling beneath the shaft, a thump as something blunders into the desk. She bends her knee and steels herself to lash out the moment the next walker's face appears in the opening, watches as grimy fingers appears to probe at the edge of the shaft.

She shifts, her body shivering with tension. 

And then Daryl is squinting in at her. "Hell of a time to play a game of hide and seek," he says. "You two 'bout ready to come out now?"

She lets out the breath she was holding in a sudden gasp and hears Maggie's muffled sob behind her; slithers forward on her back and lets Daryl help her over the worst of the ragged edges before they turn back to ease Maggie out of the shaft. She hugs Maggie tight, tighter, even as the walkers pound on the glass and the bodies of the dead litter the room. 

"Ain't no time for that," Daryl says, but he doesn’t move to separate them. "Gotta lead ya out the back way. Your old man's worried sick."

Beth sobs then too, but she releases Maggie and reaches for the knife that Daryl holds out; waits until Maggie has picked up the lost poker before nodding and swiping at her eyes. They head back the way they came, passing several fallen walkers, darting past an open locker where one of the geeks has gotten himself trapped behind a fallen bureau and a pair of moth-eaten chairs. 

"Smart move, hidin' in that ventilation shaft," Daryl murmurs when they've almost reached the thin shaft of light at the rear of the building, the door wedged open by a pair of rusty hedge-clippers.

"Got the idea from somethin' that happened to Maggie a long time ago," Beth says. "Guess everything happens for a reason."

Maggie touches her shoulder as they pass into the rear courtyard, and Beth smiles and takes her sister's hand before she turns her face up to the sun.


End file.
